As executives from Columbia Records gathered in the London Hilton last July for their annual international convention, they heard something strange going on outside.
A guy who looked like a cross between Woody Allen and Eddie Haskell was on the street corner, playing his guitar in an impromptu audition.
He was promptly arrested, but not before he got some attention and an eventual recording contract.
His name is Elvis Costello (the Elvis taken from you-know-who and the Costello from his mother's side of the family) and he's been causing quite a stir.
He can be heard at 11 p.m. Saturday on KMET FM on the King Biscuit Flower Hour.
His new album, This Year's Model, (Columbia) comes right on the heels of his critically-acclaimed LP, My Aim is True.
It was a strong enough debut to have him ushered in with the same hoopla given Bruce Springsteen and his then freshly-starched rock 'n' roll.
You'll find on his new album that the two to three-and-a-half minute tunes are snappy, catchy and to the point.
The music is a combination of early Beatles, Herman's Hermits and Dave Clark Five; Question Mark and the Mysterians of the mid-'60s and contemporary everybody else.
The lyrics deal with society and, above all, anger... anger that pre-dates back to Cro-Magnon Man.
Costello's a 23-year-old former computer technician whose insights far out-distance his youthful age. He's constantly putting in perspective the sights around him, the mainstream falling somewhere between apathy and lethargy.
That's the way he sees it, feels it and sings it.
The man with the zoom-lens mind has a way of bringing total indifference into sharp focus, like in "Radio, Radio."
The cut deals with the inordinate amount of junk music on the airwaves today and how its run by a handful of "fools and idiots," as he calls them.
The pace is set with "No Action," a wild and woolly rocker that'll have you humming those catchy three-chord hooks and phrasings.
Costello carries into his second album part of the philosophy he began with his first... the non-crediting of musicians, even though his newly-formed band played on the second LP.
He said he would have put a credit line on the sleeve of the first disc that read, "No thanks to anybody," but was beaten to it by The Damned which had a similar version.
Strange? Angry? Weird? Troublemaker? Rock 'n' roller? Honest? Revolutionary? Confused?
Costello, you'll find, is a lot of each.
And you'll find the effect it has on his music is positively scintillating.
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